“That was fast.”
“I think he must be picking us up first. Put your shoes on.”
The man seemed more boy than man. He looked like a college kid. Very well groomed and nice-featured. Big lips, though. Mick Jagger lips. He introduced himself as Tom. Full name: Tom Katz.
In the van, Tom, now seated behind the wheel, said that his father had a sense of humor.
“Katz is a Jew name,” said Jane, seating herself right behind their young, good-looking driver. “Are you Jewish?”
“First, Jews don’t generally like it when you use the word ‘Jew’ as an adjective, although I don’t think you meant anything by it.”
“Oh I didn’t mean anything at all. I like Jews. Especially the ones who give me the giggles like on Seinfeld.”
“Well, as it so happens, I’m not Jewish. I mean, technically. Although my father’s Jewish. Hence the name. But to be Jewish your mother has to be Jewish and my mother was a Pillsbury. Not one of the baking company Pillsburys, but the Greenville, Mississippi, Pillsburys. Though ironically, Mama did go to the Pillsbury bake-off one year before she married my father, but they wouldn’t let her compete because they were afraid people would think things were rigged if she’d won. The good thing was that she got one hundred dollars anyway just for showing up and being a good sport, and everybody liked her cobbler and didn’t even guess it had brandy in it.”
“You’re a good driver,” said Jane. “You handled yourself on that ice patch in a very fruity way. You know: ‘with a plum.’”
Ruth rolled her eyes.
“A plum?” asked Tom, addressing Jane through the rearview mirror.
“Jane only tells jokes that have to be explained,” shouted Ruth from the rear of the van. “In my opinion, they stop being jokes at that point and just become a nuisance.”
Jane emitted a low growl. “What I was trying to say, Ruth, is that I notice he hasn’t spun us into a ditch like some people we know and love.”
“Yeah,” said Tom. “They did put us through a little mini training course. But it was mostly about how to treat our passengers — you know, how to lay the Southern hospitality on real thick, since a bunch of Lucky Aces employees are coming from other parts of the country where rudeness is the order of the day. My four buddies and me — as it happens: we’re locals. We just graduated from Ole Miss last year, so we know all about Dixie manners.”
Jane looked as if she was merely feigning interest, but she was actually genuinely engaged in what Tom was saying and couldn’t help it that her face didn’t register sincerity convincingly. “You graduated from college and now you’re working for a casino?”
“Just till the end of the summer. We all thought it would be nice to get ourselves a taste of the real world before going on to law school.”
“You’re all going to be lawyers?”
“Well, four of us. Pardlow wants to be a legal historian. He wants to write about the law and go on Court TV and CNN and say shit like — sorry. Say stuff like, ‘Well, you know, Wolf, this isn’t the first time a man has been charged with killing his whole family with a fireplace poker. That would be the People of Ohio versus Billy Pokeman back in 1923.’ Anyway, I mention my buddies because we’ve been watching the five of you since we started working at the casino a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh, you have?” Jane raised her eyebrows for the benefit of Ruth, the way people in sitcoms do to show wry, shared interest.
Tom nodded. “And we were wonderin’ if any of you were seeing anybody. I mean, we haven’t noticed any guys hanging out at the casino who looked like they might know you.”
Jane laughed. “You mean since you don’t see any guys who might be our boyfriends, that means we don’t have any?”
“Yeah. Well, yeah.”
“Well, we don’t have any boyfriends,” Ruth blurted. “And some of us aren’t even in the market for boyfriends.”
“Just one-night stands,” Tom Katz let fly.
Jane mimed drumsticking a snare. “Ba-bum-bum! Does your Pillsbury Dough Mama know her little Jewboy talks like this?”
Tom locked eyes with Jane through the rearview mirror. “Not to get too P.C. on you here, but Jewish men don’t generally like it when you put the word ‘boy’ after the word ‘Jew.’”
“I was just funning you.”
Ruth interjected sourly, “Why don’t you explain to Mr. Katz just how that was funny?”
“Oh why don’t you just hush up, Ruth?”
Tom tried to get the conversation back on track: “I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is that we all — my four friends and me — we’re gettin’ a little hard up for some decent female companionship. And ya’ll are the only ladies anywhere near our age in skuzzy Casino Land who don’t look like they used to be strippers or drug addicts, or’ve been out there spreading STDs around since junior high school.”
Jane’s mouth fell open. Ruth rolled her eyes again and tried to find something distracting out the window to take her attention away from the conversation.
“You’re awfully disgusting,” replied Jane, with a casualness to her delivery that belied the harsh sentiment, “and awfully picky, considering you drive a courtesy van for a living.” Jane punctuated her observation with a flirty wink directed toward the van’s rearview mirror.
“Nothing wrong with being picky even while you’re slummin’,” replied Tom. “Anyway, if I can get all your phone numbers, then I’ll divvy them up between the guys, and we’ll all do something together. Some nice, safe, ‘break-the-ice’ group activity.”
“Count me out,” said Ruth, under her breath. She was looking at a cotton field, the plants not yet plowed under. Little white bolls polka-dotted the landscape like dandruff.
“I tell you what I’ll do,” said Jane, sounding like a used-car salesman. “I’ll give you my phone number. You can probably get it easy anyway. It’s in the book under ‘Higgins Antiques.’ And I’ll talk to my friends — including Ruth here, who I’m sure would be up for anyplace where she can get fried catfish or hot tamales or ribs. Ain’t that right, Ruth?”
“You act like I’m a shark that just has to eat all the time,” said Ruth, still looking out the window.
Jane ignored this. “Anyway, Mr. Katz, I’ll let you know how I did when you call.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” said Tom. “You’ll like my friends.”
“You mean even though they’re clearly ‘slummin’ to be with us?”
“I shouldn’t have said that. They’re good guys. And they know you’re good girls.”
“What does that mean: ‘good girls’? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we all work as cocktail waitresses in a casino.”
Tom laughed. “We won’t hold that against you.”
Ruth groaned again, this time quite audibly.
Chapter Six
Tulleford, England, August 1859
Tom Catts and his four friends, all of whom worked at the Tulleford Cotton Mill, took their luncheon in the High Road. At six or seven minutes past the matutinal hour of eleven o’clock from Monday through Friday (luncheons were not taken on Saturday half-holidays), the five men placed themselves side-by-side upon the long bench which had been installed by Mr. Crawdon to accommodate those who came to have their shoes repaired in his shop. Sometimes there was a lady or gent waiting upon the bench for the heel of a top boot to be mended or a blucher to be revamped. But this person would not reside there for very long after the importunate arrival of Tom and his fellow millhands, for their intercourse was noisy and roistering, and their slovenly workingmen’s dress — oily and cotton-fibre-dusted fustian — was equally difficult to bear, especially if one was not disposed to affiliate with those of ill-bred behaviour and disreputable appearance. As the men would laugh and jostle one another whilst clanking their lunch buckets and clinking their tin cups, the customer would be crowded and crushed to the point of removing him or herself to another precinct — perhaps the bench in front of the blacksmith’s shed or the one before the linen-draper’s concern, or even the fishmonger’s shop (where the fragrance of fish was only slightly less insulting to the nostrils as that of working men bearing the stench of grease and metal-and-spindle-lubricating mineral oils about their persons).